With the appointment of Jaume Collboni, as mayor of Barcelona, ??a call from him comes to mind, it must have been around the end of 2018, in which he conveyed to me his intention to write a book that would reflect conversations with professionals from different sectors and thus make a reflection. about the great challenges of each one of them. He proposed a dialogue about tourism and citizenship that was extremely interesting and that I shared with my good friend Ángel Díaz, a partner at ALS Consulting.
The product of all these conversations and dialogues is the book entitled Imaginem Barcelona (2019), a book that I invite everyone to read as it already reflects the interests and involvement of the current mayor in topics such as art and culture hand in hand. by Frederic Amat; research and innovation, with Jordi Camí; women and work with the Kellys (Association of women chambermaids); democracy, participation and social services by Lluís Rabell, current Councilor for Education and the Elderly and the Neighborhood Plan, and the Metropolitan Area with Nuria Marín, mayoress of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Well, as I was saying, I recalled those moments of dialogue with our mayor about tourism and citizenship and I reread the book four years later to see if that conversation, full of ideas, dreams, actions, possible projects, self-criticism, etc. Was it still current or the passage of time had cornered it into obsolescence.
Despite having suffered during this time a pandemic that has undoubtedly disrupted part of our reality and has put us on notice of how vulnerable we are, today everything expressed in those conversations would be fully valid with a nuance, and that is that today , after the harshness of the years lived due to Covid, no one doubts the relevance of tourism and its very important contribution to economic recovery. Another thing is the model, here we could enter into a great debate.
Jaume Collboni expressed in this chapter of the book: “The challenge for the future of Barcelona is to face the management of tourism with the aim of turning one of the main generators of wealth, work and promotion of the city into an element of consensus and social development” . A very precise statement, full of intentions but unfortunately, due to due circumstances, it has not been practically possible to execute.
In that conversation I made express reference to the need to work on an exciting city project; in the express and unapologetic recognition of tourism by the City Council, without thereby renouncing self-criticism, the commitment to sustainability in its broadest social, economic and environmental sense. To the Barcelona model of tourism governance and management, to the city with the best tourism schools in the world, to the Barcelona of knowledge and talent, to the Barcelona of technology and innovation. To the city of opportunities.
Four years have passed and we are still in time to execute many of those ideas shared with our Mayor, a figure who, due to his career, is a great connoisseur of our city and its problems. It is time to face the challenges with courage, with a spirit of transformation, without focusing solely on short-term projects with a model and perspective of a competitive city in the broadest sense.
Tourism in Barcelona urgently needs knowledge, the great Tourism Observatory as Jaume Collboni suggested in the book, which allows us to have data, analysis, information in real time to make the best decisions at all times. Second, we need participatory planning. You cannot act on impulse to stop controversies or specific problems. We have to plan the tourist city that we want involving all the agents, different administrations; other areas of the City Council (sustainability, infrastructure, environment, etc.); to the private sector with representation of relevant businessmen and not so many associations -many of which, if I may say so, should also be subject to changes in order to make the city more and less political and requests for subsidies-; to new interlocutors, citizens, who bring fresh air in the form of innovative projects and solutions.
Third, we must be imaginative and creative in selecting, hiring, developing, motivating and retaining talented people. And fourthly and lastly, we must be ambitious, Barcelona must be the epicenter and laboratory of the great global challenges. We have it all, we just need to get to work.
